SAN FRANCISCO, July 28, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Salient, a leading provider of AI-powered financial services technology, today announced it has secured $60 million in funding from Andreesen Horowitz, Matrix Partners, Michael Ovitz, and Y Combinator. The capital will be used to expand its comprehensive loan servicing platform that transforms how lenders and financial institutions approach collections, compliance monitoring, and customer communications.
Despite advances in fintech, loan servicing remains one of the most manual, outdated, and fragmented areas of financial services. Most lenders still rely on siloed systems, labor-heavy processes, and reactive compliance methods. Salient addresses these pain points head-on with a modern, AI-native platform.
Since launching in 2023, Salient has processed over $1 billion in transactions, helping lenders cut handle times by 60%. The company is already working with major borrowers like Westlake Financial, American Credit Acceptance, Exeter Finance, and three publicly listed banks.
Salient's platform combines three core offerings:
- AI Agent Platform – automates customer communications across multiple channels.
- AI Compliance Monitoring Suite – comprehensive compliance oversight of all lender interactions.
- Servicing Automation Platform – provides deep portfolio insights, fraud detection, and automated workflow capabilities, including insurance filing.
"We're fundamentally changing how financial institutions approach loan servicing," said Ari Malik, CEO and co-founder of Salient. "Our AI-powered platform doesn't just automate customer interactions – it intelligently handles complex downstream workflows while ensuring regulatory compliance. We're enabling lenders to improve recovery rates, reduce operational costs, and enhance customer experiences simultaneously."
Existing Customers are Already Seeing Impact
Recent implementations have demonstrated significant operational improvements for financial institutions using Salient's platform.
"Salient has been an amazing early partner for our organization," said Ian Anderson, CEO at Westlake Financial. "Their AI platform has helped generate savings of $12 million per year. What's remarkable is that we've achieved these operational efficiencies while actually reducing customer friction. The AI handles routine interactions flawlessly, allowing our remaining human agents to focus on complex cases that require personal attention."
Mike Lavin, President at Consumer Portfolio Services, has also seen significant operational efficiency, stating, "Salient has delivered to us a best practices AI Lending Platform that has enabled us to effectively scale our business during a growth period that has resulted in cost efficiencies we never could have realized in years past. The Salient team is creative, timely and professional. The sky is the limit for this Company, and I am excited to implement future AI based programs that they develop into our lending platform. I trust the team and the technology."
Expanding Platform Capabilities
This $60 million investment will fuel Salient's expansion into additional downstream servicing workflows that have traditionally required significant manual oversight. The company plans to enhance its platform with advanced capabilities for credit dispute resolution, title management automation, complaint handling and resolution, and other complex servicing operations that extend beyond traditional collections activities.
"The funding allows us to accelerate development of comprehensive automation tools that address the full spectrum of loan servicing challenges," said Malik. "Our vision is to create an end-to-end AI-powered loan servicing ecosystem that handles everything from initial customer onboarding through charge off. Working hand in hand with some of the most tech forward lenders has allowed to accelerate development significantly."
Lenders are already thinking of how else to deploy Salient’s solution across their business. Curt Sidden, Chairman of American Credit Acceptance, stated "Salient has been an amazing partner for American Credit Acceptance as we are learning the power of Artificial Intelligence to unlock new opportunities in our business. From significant compliance enhancements to an improved customer service experience, the power of the Salient product has been transformational for our company. Importantly, the Salient team is amazing in their ability to integrate their products into our existing operation with relative ease. We look forward to continuing to utilize Salient to enhance company performance."
Pete Agostinelli, President of Mid-Atlantic Finance, corroborates this, indicating that "as early adopters of AI solutions, we initially saw it as a supplemental part of our daily operations. We were pleasantly surprised by the versatility of Salient’s platform and how seamlessly it could be implemented across various functions. With the rapid pace of Salient’s technological advancement, the potential use cases now feel virtually limitless. While cost reduction was a key motivator, the real value has been in the platform’s ability to help drive revenue and deliver a more consistent, high-quality experience for our end users."
About Salient
Designed specifically for the consumer finance sector, Salient is a generative AI platform crafted to automate loan servicing end-to-end. Launched in 2023, Salient has interacted with millions of US consumers, collected over $1 billion, and is backed by top tier venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Matrix Partners, and General Catalyst, alongside leaders from Tesla, Stripe, and Airtable.
Arijit Malik ari@trysalient.com
